Devanagari is an alphabet commonly used throughout India and Nepal. Devanagari script is written from left to right, does not have distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a horizontal line that runs along the top of full letters, typically referred to as a shirorekha stroke. Devanagari is used to write Standard Hindi, Marathi, Nepali along with Awadhi, Konkani, Magahi, Maithili, Marwari, and several other Indic languages. Because it is the standardized script for the Hindi language, Devanagari is one of the most used and adopted writing systems in the world.
In typical handwriting recognition systems, a computer may receive and interpret intelligible text input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. Among various recognition techniques, a complete handwriting recognition system also handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters and finds the most plausible words. Handwriting recognition of Devanagari script, however, can be challenging because of the shirorekha stroke that connects individual characters.